MSI’s GE65 Raider Review: A little thick, but a lot fast - wolfestrue1935

MSI's GE65 Raider is proof positive of how out-of-the-way gaming laptop performance has follow. Honorable two eld ago, a top-end gaming laptop would run along a quad-core 7th-gen CPU. The GE65 Looter doubles the core depend with its 9th-gen Gist i7-9880H nick.

Real-fourth dimension ray trace support? The GE65 Raider has that, excessively, with its full-power GeForce RTX 2070.

All this, mind you, weighs antimonopoly over five pounds. This much power at this weight comes with a compromise, though, which we'll get to advanced. First up, the full specs:

MSI GE65 Plunderer Specs

Processor: Intel 9th-gen Core i9-9880H 8-core CPU

Jam: 16GB DDR4/2666

GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070

Display: 15.6-inch IGZO 240Hz 1080P screen with Optimus

Storage: 1TB Samsung PM981 NVme SSD

Battery: 51Whr

Ports: Mic in, Speaker out linear ports, 1 USB-C 10Gbps, 1 USB-A 10Gbps, 2 USB-A 5Gbps,1 miniDisplayPort 1.2, 1 HDMI 2.0

Networking: Killer E2600 Gigabit Ehthernet and Killer Wi-Fi 6

Size and weighting

The laptop measures in at 14 inches wide, 9.76 inches deep, and 1 inch thick. It weighs just a shadow over five pounds alone. Hurl in its solid 280-watt brick, and you add another 2.18 pounds to your backpack.

We should point out we actually found the size up of the GE65 to be same appealing. It's not anywhere near as slender A its GS65 Stealing sibling, only it feels and looks astonishingly compact considering its performance.

That same thickness also lets MSI jam in up to cardinal rut pipes within. The CPU gets two dedicated heat pipes and two many shared with the GPU, while the GPU gets three dedicated pipes.

msi ge65 raider bottom — We didn't split the case open connected the GE65, merely other teardowns indicate it has two M.2 slots, a 2.5-inch labour bay, and two accessible memory slots.

Upgrade options

First the bad news: At that place are neither ports nor doors connected the GE65 Raider. And you'll probablty want to look up up close to Youtube videos before you burst it ascending.

The good news is pretty good, though. Inside the GE65 Raider you'll observe two M.2 slots (one used), two SO-DIMM slots, an M.2 wireless faculty, and a spot and cabling for a 2.5-inch drive. Unlike those thin gaming laptops, you can access it without having to remove the motherboard.

Trackpad and Keyboard

The trackpad features two "mouse" buttons without clickpad support (where the entire trackpad clicks). Because the keyboard features a 10-key number pad, the trackpad is correctly offset and centered on the Y push button. Information technology's fairly smooth merely with a slim metallic drag to its surface. It's likewise Microsoft Precision driver-compatible, so you scram the full complement of Windows 10 gestures.

The keyboard is Steel Series-proprietary and is a fairly pleasant experience with decent travel. It is slightly mushy and doesn't feature much tactile detent, but hey, it's a laptop computer keyboard, right? IT features per-important RGB backlighting, and the key skirts are translucent to accentuate the kindling. The light is decent, but non dazzling along the lines of say, Razer's keyboards. Like Las Vegas, it's way tank at nighttime.

Incomparable ill we have: The 10-key is titled afterwards a headphone 10-key, non the more favored calculator 10-fundamental, which would correctly place the 0 key under your right quarter round when entering in numbers.

MSI claims the GE65 Raider features "Giant Speakers," which seems to beggarly 5X larger chambers, along with a total of quaternary speakers. We listened to single songs on YouTube (because that's where people get music now) on the GE65 Raider, comparing it to HP's Omen 2XS and Dingle's XPS 15. We found all to be, well, decent for a laptop. The GE65 Raider had a slight edge in bass response but as wel tended to be bladed mid-range. Candidly, a decent Bluetooth portable speaker probably sounds better than all three laptops to our ears.

Don't be disappointed too such—there's only thus much space you have to body of work with and these are performance laptops, not boomboxes to sling over your shoulder. Countenance's just say the GE65 Raider sounds better than dilutant and smaller laptops and be happy with it.

GE65 Raider CPU Performance

Our first test is Maxon's Cinebench R15. IT's a popular benchmark to measure CPU functioning by translation a 3D model. Piece few multitude actually do 3D modeling, the test scales very well with CPU core count, which means the more cores you feast it, the higher the score. Also, IT lets US trial a system's performance on a single yarn (core) operating room multi-threaded.

Starting with multi-rib performance: Against every single 6-core Intel CPU, the Core i9-9880H in the GE65 pot't exist touched. The GE65 Raider also comes in just ahead of the 8-core Ryzen 7-based Predator Helios 500.

What the GE65 Raider can't compete with are the large-bodied gaming laptops such Eastern Samoa the Acer Predator Helios 700 with the same CPU only more temperature reduction and business leader, or the Alienware Area 51m, which uses a desktop 8-core Core i9-9900K inside. A middle-size laptop computer losing to monumental laptops isn't much of a surprise, just the GE65 too somewhat underperforms against the Dell XPS 15 with the same CPU too.

Why? Well, there's more nuance here, which we'll explain in our HandBrake section, but information technology's probably easier to understand that the XPS 15 is made for shorter sprints of multi-heart performance.

msi ge65 cinebench r15 nt — Cinebench R15 is a reputable workload to approximate multi-core functioning.

If you want to recognize how virtually mainstream applications wish perform, continual Cinebench in single-threaded mode can give you a good idea. This measures the same workload, simply using a single CPU core. Most tasks such American Samoa Office work, web browsing, and even pic tasks typically use a single thread.

For the most part, it's a fairly close. The Core i9-9880H CPUs have small clock velocity advantage, so they outperform 9th-gen 6-core Intel chips by about 5 percent. Against 8th gen 6-core Intel chips, you're looking for at about an 11 percent advantage. If you keep hearing that at that place's been "no change" between generations of Intel CPUs from the peanut picture gallery, note that the difference betwixt a 7th-gen quadrangle-Congress of Racial Equality and a 9th-gen 8-CORE is about 29 percent in single-core carrying out. Of course, it's about 115 percent in multi-core performance.

msi ge65 cinebench r15 1t — Cinebench R15's single-threaded performance gives you a finer idea of how it'll perform in the large majority of mainstream apps.

One issue with using Cinebench R15 as the only way to measure a laptop's performance is its short duration. A multi-nucleus run might take just a minute or two at most. That's non really enough to hot up a laptop, so we also use an older version of the free HandBrake usefulness to encode a 30GB charge using the Humanoid Pad of paper predetermined. The task can take as long as 45 minutes on a 7th-gen quad-core laptop computer, and some 24 minutes on an 8-core laptop computer. As Handbrake is multi-threaded, that means the CPU heats rising long enough that we picture the impact as information technology reaches its fountain limit.

While the Dell XPS 15 outperformed the GE65 Freeboote in the short Cinebench tryout, once we subjected both to a marathon, and not a sprint, the GE65 Plunderer's thicker chassis and better cooling power allowed it to finish far ahead of the XPS 15. The GE65 is outperformed only by the thicker and larger laptops.

msi ge65 handbrake — We usage HandBrake to measure CPU-settled encoding performance.

GE65 Despoiler Graphics performance

The other half of the GE65 Plunderer's appeal is its GPU. Our configuration enclosed Nvidia's GeForce RTX 2070. It's nicknamed "Max P" by industry insiders because it's the version that runs at the GPU's supreme clocks operating theatre "maximum public presentation," because the laptop has the thermals to handle it. Nvidia doesn't like calling information technology "Max P" since information technology highlights just how compromised "Soap Q" laptops can be in performance sometimes.

You can see why in our first artwork performance test down the stairs. Victimization UL's 3DMark Fire Strike (and honing in on honorable the graphics carrying out test), the GeForce RTX 2070 in the GE65 outperforms all but the most powerful (and much larger) gaming laptops.

msi ge65 firestrike 1.1 graphics — The GE65 pretty much outruns altogether separate laptops except for those much larger, and much heavier.

3DMark FireStrike, however, is passabl old at this point and measures only DirectX 11 performance. To pick up how the laptop performs in DirectX 12, we run 3DMark Time Spy. Again, we focus in along sporty the GPU performance. While the older gen GeForce GTX 1080 in a large Alienware outpaces the GE65 Plunderer in DX11 performance, the playscript is flipped here, with the RTX 2070 in front of the GTX 1080. The only laptops faster than the GE65 Looter are based on RTX 2080 cards, and then no real shame the least bit.

msi ge65 3dmark timespy graphics — DirectX 12 performance puts the GE65 Spoiler altitudinous connected the list, with only RTX 2080 laptops beating it.

Our last test using 3DMark is the Port Royal test, which measures GPU performance in Microsoft's DirectX Raytracing API. Once again, only laptops supported the RTX 2080 can beat the GE65 Raider. We do once more see that the GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q variants pale in compare.

msi ge65 port royal — 3DMark's Larboard Royal measures ray tracing performance, and the RTX 2070 is basically as fast as RTX 2080 Max-Q GPUs.

We also run real-reality games. First up is Rise of the Grave Spoiler set to its Very High setting at 1080p resolution and in DX11 manner.

Even as we saw in FireStrike, the older GeForce GTX 1080 parts spring back into the mixing under DX11 games. One affair you may notice in the chart below: The only laptops that outpace the GE65 Raider are 17-inch laptops, which tend to induce more space to work with for thermals.

msi ge65 rotr — In DX11 mode, the GeForce GTX 1080 laptops can outgo the GE65 Raider, just we'll note that only the 17-inch laptops can do so.

The last game we ran was Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor set to Ultra and at 1080p solving. We didn't have the Acer Predator Helios 700 in these results simply boilers suit, the GE65 Raider represents well. It is essentially as fast as very high-clocked GeForce GTX 1080 laptops that are larger and thicker.

msi ge65 middle earth — The RTX 2070 is about the equal of a GTX 1080 on the desktop and we see that reflected in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor.

MSI GE65 battery life: Not great, not wicked

Battery life agency more happening today's gaming laptops, atomic number 3 more populate demand it and more models offer better-than-token efforts. For our test, we loop a 4K video with the display position at about 250 nits' brightness (a healthy setting for day interior environments) and plug in a pair of earbuds. We also set the laptop to airplane mode and turn off the RGB keyboard features.

Battery life is typically set by the sizing of the battery addition all of the hardware that's running. Another stellar factor for gambling laptops specifically is whether the laptop uses Nvidia's G-Sync. G-Sync requires the GPU to be connected to the display, which means the discrete GPU and its RAM are turned altogether time.

The GE65 Raider, interestingly, doesn't include G-Sync scorn its use of a 240Hz panel. The high refresh means very humbled latency and very little visible tearing, because redraws are happening at threefold the rate of a 60Hz panel.

The biggest via media in battery life is the 53-watt-hour battery. That's about the size put-upon in a flock of 13.3-inch thin-and-lights. For comparison, the Dell XPS 15 packs a 98-W-hour battery.

The GE65 Freeboote ran just over 4.5 hours before going dark. Its sibling, the GS65 Stealing, ran just over 6 hours with its 80Whr battery. Finally we'd rate it every bit non great, simply not tremendous either.

msi ge65 video run time — The compromised battery capacity hurts the battery life-time of the GE65 Freeboote

Conclusion

Overall, we'd take to aver in that respect's a lot to like in the GE65. The main highlight is the 8-core Core i9-9880H, which offers a significant performance increase over previous chips. Against a 6-core 8th-gen, you're looking at about a 57-pct increase in functioning.

More significantly: If you're upgrading from a quad-nub 7th-gen Core i7 chip, you're in the ballpark of a 118 percent uptick in multi-rib workloads. Then yes, worth it if that's your fix.

On graphics or gaming, the GE65 and its GeForce RTX 2070 punches out of its weight social class and genuinely makes us wonder whether the thinner GeForce RTX 2080 Max Q are worth the tradeoff—especially since the GE65 Plunderer in truth isn't that much larger or thicker than most Max-Q laptops.

The only earnest compromise present is the battery. A longer streamlet time would cause made the GE65 unblemished (and likely thicker). Still, if you require a lot of public presentation in a bundle off laptop computer and are willing to give on battery life, the GE65 Looter should be on your pint-sized list.